BAC FOLK ARTS PRESENTS: BROOKLYN MAQAM ARAB MUSIC FESTIVAL Ahlan wa Sahlan! Welcome to Brooklyn Maqam Arab Music Festival featuring local musicians, bands, and dancers presenting Arab musical traditions from Egypt, Yemen, Israel, Tunisia, Palestine, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, Lebanon, and Sudan. Maqam is the Arabic word referring to the patterns of musical notes, based on a quarter note system, that form the building blocks of traditional Arab music. Join BAC Folk Arts throughout March 2008 for Brooklyn Maqam concerts, symposia, and workshops featuring local musicians specializing in Arab folk traditions, classical forms, and contemporary arrangements. Entry to all events is FREE of charge and all events are open to the public. Saturday, March 29, 9-11pm Alwan for the Arts Diverse Traditions: Arab Folk Music in Regional Expressions This evening features Naji Youssef performing a repertoire Lebanese folklore, Ahmed Alrodini singing traditional Yemeni songs from the Red Sea Coast, and Adbel Rahim Boutat presenting songs of the Moroccan Berber traditions. This concluding weekend of Brooklyn Maqam highlights a range of traditional music styles, inviting New York urbanites to better understand the cultural richness of rural music forms which continue to be relevant to the city’s Arab life. Program Naji Youssef Introduced by Alexandre Tannous Youssef is a master of the rural Lebanese song tradition. He opens the evening with genres of jabali songs including styles of mawwal such as mijana and ataba. Youssef will sing Lebanese folk songs made famous by “The Voice of Lebanon”, Wadi el Safi and “the Father of Folklor” Zaki Nassif. The program will also include lively dekbat, such as dalaouna and hawara from Bilad ash-Sham. Maurice Chedid: Oud, vocals Mohamed Abdullah: violin Amir Naoum: Derbekki Ahmed Alrodini Ahmed Alrodini and Isaac Gutwilik present traditional music from various regions of Yemen. Ahmed hails from the Red Sea Coast area where numerous distinct tempos and rhythms such as Lahaji originate. These are distinct from the more well-known songs and rhythms emanating from the region surrounding the nation’s capitol, Sana’a. The majority of Yemenis in Brooklyn come from Sana’a. Ahmed and Isaac play the Sana’a material but they are to be commended for preserving and performing the much rarer Red Sea (Tehama) Coast repertoire. Ahmed Alrodini: vocals, oud Isaac Gutwilik: percussion FOR MORE INFO VISIT WWW.BROOKLYNARTSCOUNCIL.ORG OR CONTACT BAC FOLK ARTS AT 718-625-0080 Order of performance: . Sanaani Love & Longing Song Medley, Wasta tempo into fast Sarai Dance tempo . Hindi Love Song . Lahaji Dance Song . Lahaji Drums . Tehama Coast Drums, Madiff, Hajir, Marfa' and Mishkal rhythms . Traditional song praising the beauty of Yemen, Sarai tempo Abdel Rahim Boutat Boutat closes tonight’s program with traditional Berber music from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco. Oral traditions are integral in the transmission and lyrical content of Berber music, which is also noted for particular modes and rhythmic patterns, including pentatonic scales and African rhythms. Even today, the tradition is maintained by traveling musicians who perform at weddings and other ceremonial and social events. Tonight, Boutat plays the stringed loutar¸ and is accompanied by the talented Metro-area Moroccan musicians Brahim Fribgane and Ahmed Sahel on bendir. Abdel Rahim Boutat:vocals, loutar Brahim Fribgane: bendir Ahmel Sahel: bendir Artists Biographies Mohamed Abdullah Abdullah graduated from the Institute of Classical Music, with a specialization in both Western and Arab violin, from his native city of Aleppo, Syria. Known for its listening community with scrupulous aesthetic standards for Arab music, Aleppo (Halab) produces a repertoire of Halabi and Tarab songs and singers such as Sabah El Fakhry. While in Syria, Abdullah played from this repertoire and in 1990 came to the US to stay, while on tour with the Halabi vocalist Shadi Jamil. Abdullah continues to play violin in the Syrian repertoire, particularly at Syrian Jewish music events in the Ocean Parkway corridor of Brooklyn. He is one of the few very talented local violinists to perform pan-Arab styles and songs at Arab nightclubs, concerts and parties in the Tristate area. Abdel Rahim Boutat A Moroccan Beber from the town of Khenifra in the Middle Atlas Mountains, Boutat began playing the loutar as young boy in middle school. The loutar, a four stringed skin-faced lute, is among the diverse instrumentation found in Berber music, which also includes bagpipes and oboe. Boutat began playing at local social events and weddings in Morocco before migrating to Canada, and later settling in New York. He has played in concerts presented by prestigious cultural organizations such as Le Festival du Monde Arabe de Montréal and World Music Institute. Maurice Chedid Maurice Chedid honed his ‘oud playing at the Lebanese Conservatory of Middle Eastern Music, but comes from a family of musicians. His father was a highly esteemed cantor in the Maronite Church in Lebanon, and his sister, a renowned vocalist. Chedid performed a variety of Arab song traditions including Syrian and Andalusian Muwashahat, regional songs (khaligi and Lebanese) and Egyptian classics in nightclubs and a variety of venues throughout Lebanon. As a member of the National Lebanese Folkloric Group, he toured internationally for four years speciallzing in Lebanese folksongs or “beladi” traditions, including djebeli, and the repertoire of Lebanon’s national beloved singers Fairouz and Wadi es-Safi. In 1988, the proprietor of Cedars of Lebanon, Tony Hosri, invited Chedid to play at the NYC based restaurant-nightclub, where Chedid played regularly until it’s closing in 2001. Chedid currently plays at Arab social celebrations and venues throughout the metro area. FOR MORE INFO VISIT WWW.BROOKLYNARTSCOUNCIL.ORG OR CONTACT BAC FOLK ARTS AT 718-625-0080 Brahim Fribgane Born and raised in Morocco, Fribgane grew up surrounded by North African, Gnawa, Berber, Arab and Andalusian music. By 16 he was playing guitar at weddings and parties in Casablanca, where he contributed significantly to the development of a new style of Moroccan pop that took hold in the early 80s. After immigrating to New York, Fribgane began playing the dumbek (goblet drum), which he has modified to express the rhythmic complexities of a drum set with this single instrument. He performs regularly with fellow Moroccan and Brooklyn Maqam artist Malika Zarra at BOOM in the West Village. www.brahimfribgane.com/index.html Isaac Gutwilik Canadian-born Gutwilik’s interest in music began at a young age when his aunt gave him a Perez Prado album and his own transistor radio. School offered him an immersion into the world of traditional Jewish and Hebrew chanting. While living in Jerusalem, Gutwilik began serious conga studies and became a member of the percussion ensemble at the Rubin Academy of Music. At the same time (1978-80), Isaac became a percussionist for Yemeni choreographer/singer Yitzhak Levy- Awami, with whom he performed Yemeni folk music. Since moving to New York in 1989, Gutwilik has specialized in the traditional Jewish folk music of Yemen. He performs regularly with fellow Brooklyn Maqam artist Ahmed Alrodini, a locally-based expert in music from Yemen’s Red Sea coast. Naji Youssef The Lebanese-American tenor Naji Youssef was born in the El-Shouf region of Lebanon and immigrated in 1988 to Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, where he is cantor for the Catholic Melkite Church of the Virgin Mary. The Melkite music tradition includes characteristics such as the ancient Psaltiqua mode of notation and Arab maqamat. Youssef is also a member of Simon Shaheen’s Near Eastern Music Ensemble. Known for his expressive vocal ornamentation, he is a featured singer at local haflat (parties). Youssef’s voice is reminiscent of the Lebanese jabali (mountain) style exemplified by such masters as Wadi’ Assafi. He has mastered many repertoires besides the Melkite hymns, including old poetic singing styles such as mijana, ‘ataba, shruqi and zajal. Arab Music in its Rural Expressions Musician and educator Taoufiq Ben Amor has provided the following article on rural Arab music traditions, such as those featured in tonight’s program, and their evolution. It is my belief that city-Arab music generally is far behind Arab peasant music with regard to animation and originality. The urban music generally sounds stilted, affected and artificial; the peasant music, on the other hand, gives the impression of being a far more spontaneous and vivid manifestation despite its primitiveness. Bela Bartok (1881-1945, Hungarian composer, pianist and ethnomusicologist) Despite Bartok’s, and many other European ethnomusicologists of his time, static notion of “tradition” and his “frenzy” to preserve the “primitive” and “authentic” in the face of rampant modernity, he is accurate in describing rural Arab music as lively. This liveliness is due to many factors: the communal and celebratory nature of this music, its projecting instruments--like the zurna or mizmar (reed horn), mizwij (bagpipe) and the tabl (two-sided drum)—built to be played in large open spaces, and the strong tie this music has with dance. This music also has very strong and old ties to poetry, and its lyrics are often full of folk histories and wisdom. After the independence of many Arab countries in the 1950s and 1960s, rural forms of music have become threatened on several fronts. FOR MORE INFO VISIT WWW.BROOKLYNARTSCOUNCIL.ORG OR CONTACT BAC FOLK ARTS AT 718-625-0080 Most emerging governments, with their Arab nationalist agendas, favored urban expressions of music, which they saw as older and more cultivated. Forms such as the Andalusian Muwashah in North Africa, the Sawt in the Arabian Peninsula, or the maqam Baghdadi in Iraq, became the official music of the state run television stations, radios and recording companies. Two decades later, the same governments started showing interest in “preservation” in the sense Bartok and other European scholars expressed.